Through a herculean effort on the part of Miss Terry, we got the new issue of the Gypsy Journal mailed out, and now we can take a deep breath and relax. At least until next time.

In yesterday’s blog, I wrote about how Cheryl Howarth from Miller Insurance helped us get the ball rolling with National Interstate following our burglary, and I mentioned that another agent, from a different agency, also intervened on our behalf.

At that time I did not have her name available, but I do now. It was Gina Shaver, from Epic Insurance in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Gina’s office phone number is 605-271-8100, and her company website is http://www.epic-ins.com/.  She is another agent whom I highly recommend. I like supporting the people who support me. Of course, that’s a two way street, as some other people are now well aware of.

As I wrote when I first reported on our crime, RVing is a safe activity overall. But, as I also stated, crime can and does happen anywhere. Most of the crimes suffered by RVers are petty. Unsecured bicycles and coolers have a way of walking off in campgrounds, if their owners go away and leave them. Most of the reports of this activity we have heard about occurred in state parks.

A couple of years ago in Quartzsite, there was a rash of thefts of portable generators. Some were stolen even when chained to the owners’ RVs. The thieves cut the cables with bolt cutters and carried them off. Bicycles also were disappearing in Quartzsite about the same time.   

But crimes of violence, while uncommon in the RV world, do happen, as our experience, as well as this story in the Bandera County Courier show http://www.bccourier.com/Archives/News_detail.php?recordID=091210N5.

According to the news story, a couple camping at the Medina Lake Thousand Trails in Lakehills, Texas were accosted by two teenagers wearing ski masks who pointed a gun at them and said “Give me all your money or I’ll kill you.” As it turns out, the gun was a BB gun, and the boys were at the campground with their grandparents.

These two punks were damned lucky. If they had pointed a BB gun at somebody else, they may have found out their victim was carrying a real gun. Just because their gun wasn’t real doesn’t mean a victim wouldn’t have been justified in blowing them away. In the dark, who can tell?

As I also reported earlier, our only other crime related incident happened in our first months on the road, when somebody tried to steal our pickup while we were in a Coast to Coast campground in California. So much for the “security” of campgrounds, even membership campgrounds!

Still, you have to keep in mind that in over ten years of fulltime RVing, including hundreds of nights spent dry camping in every corner of the nation, those were the only criminals we have come into contact with. Most folks living in even a medium sized city rub shoulders with all kinds of thugs every day, and never know when they might become a victim.

By using common sense, choosing a well lighted area when spending a night in a parking lot, keeping your doors locked and your valuables out of sight, and by being aware of your surroundings, you will go a long way toward avoiding becoming a victim of crime. Remember, the most effective weapon you own is right between your ears, and you don’t need special training or a permit to possess it. So use it.

Thought For The Day – It’s never too late to be what you might have been.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

I’ve gotten a lot of e-mail asking where we are with the insurance company, following our burglary to our motorhome. As regular blog readers know, at first we were having a real hassle with our insurance company, National Interstate, and when we called our agent, PoliSeek, they told me they didn’t get involved in problems like that and referred me back to the same claims adjuster at National Interstate who was giving us all the problems.

After I wrote about the problem in the blog and it became a topic of discussion on several RV internet forums, most notably the Escapees, people started calling their agents and National Interstate asking if they could expect the same lack of service if they had a claim.

Cheryl Howarth from Miller Insurance in Lake Oswego, Oregon, and another agent from South Dakota, both of whom have a lot of RV owners as customers, took it upon themselves to contact National Interstate on our behalf. The response from the company was immediate, and within an hour or so the same claims adjuster who had been giving us grief was on the telephone bending over backwards to accommodate our every need.

We now have been reimbursed for all of the items that were stolen or vandalized, except for one small check that we should receive this week, and as I understand it, the shop in Indiana that did our repairs has also been paid, except for two sets of day/night shades that we are still waiting on the factory to send to us.

Fourteen days after our burglary, a representative from PoliSeek called in response to the internet uproar that had resulted, and the next day her supervisor called. They wanted to know what they could do to help, and I told them that they were too late, other agents had handled the problem for us. The supervisor told me that it really wasn’t their job to deal with the insurance company for us. In other words, they’ll take our money, but they don’t want to get involved if we have a problem. So why have an agent in the first place?

As soon as life gets back to normal after the holidays, we will be talking to Cheryl at Miller Insurance about placing all of our business with her. From all of the good feedback I have gotten from customers of Progressive, I think that’s who we’ll end up with, if Cheryl represents them. She has earned our business, and I’d much rather she makes a commission on our insurance policies. PoliSeek has seen the last penny they’ll ever get from me. If you are looking for RV insurance, or are thinking about moving your business, I’d readily recommend Cheryl. I’d recommend the agent in South Dakota as well, but I never did get her full name or the name of the agency she works for.

While Miss Terry was busy stuffing envelopes yesterday, Bad Nick wrote a new Bad Nick Blog post titled The GPS Made Me Do It. Check it out and leave a comment. 

Thought For The Day – A friend is someone who reaches for your hand, but touches your heart.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Yesterday we made a day trip of 90 miles to Victoria, Texas to pick up the January-February issue of the Gypsy Journal from our printer. Victoria is a bustling city of 86,000, and is popular with RV snowbirds who don’t want to go as far as the Rio Grande Valley. The city is big enough to have everything you could want, from big box retail stores to excellent medical services, and rates at the RV parks are affordable.

When we left Alabama for Texas, we were not sure where we would be staying, but we knew we’d be in Victoria to pick up the new issue, so I had our mail forwarding service send our mail there, care of General Delivery. But I made a newbie mistake and didn’t check first to see if they had more than one post office location. Sure enough, they have two.

Fortunately, all it took was one phone call to learn that all General Delivery mail in Victoria goes to the downtown post office on Main Street. In large cities with many post office locations, only one location accepts General Delivery, and one can spend a lot of time running back and forth trying to track down their mail.

With that chore out of the way, we picked up the new issue of the paper, and then stopped to do some banking.

Gypsy Journal subscribers Richard and Patsy King live in Victoria, and had invited us to stop by when we were in town. Richard and Patsy have been to our three Arizona Gypsy Gathering rallies, and are a fun couple we have enjoyed getting to know. We had a nice time visiting with them, talking about our respective adventures on the road, and comparing travel tips.

Speaking of RV rallies, at our Ohio rally in September, well known RV authors and speakers Joe and Vicki Kieva honored us by coming and presenting their last seminars before officially retiring from the speaking circuit. After a distinguished career as the premier RV seminar presenters in the nation, Joe and Vicki had decided it was time to really retire and just enjoy their RV travels, without having a speaking schedule to keep. We have known Joe and Vicki ever since we got on the road, and were honored to work with them at Life on Wheels.

Well, to quote those television infomercials, “But wait, there’s more!” Yesterday I got an e-mail from Joe, saying that they wanted to come to our Arizona rally and give a couple of their seminars! How cool is that? They will be presenting their excellent RVing Alaska seminar, as well as their Personal Security Tips For RVers. After our burglary earlier this month, that’s one seminar I don’t want to miss!  

The next couple of days will be a whirlwind of envelope stuffing to get the new issue in the mail. As soon as that’s done, we’ll head for Arizona, maybe stopping to pick up a couple of stories for future issues of the paper along the way.

Thought For The Day – Falling in love is easy, but staying in love is something very special.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

I’ve had a few e-mails from readers who noted that we are currently staying at a Thousand Trails preserve and wanted to know if I felt that  Thousand Trails membership was a good investment.

As I have said many times before, like anything, a campground membership can be a good investment if you use it enough. If you don’t, it’s a waste of money. I know Thousand Trails members who get a lot of value from their memberships, and others, like Terry and myself, who really don’t use it enough to justify the annual dues.

We knew going in that it would take us some time to free up our schedule enough to really take advantage of our membership, and we got it cheap enough that we can handle that.

We have stayed at Thousands Trails and NACO campgrounds in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Tennessee, Texas, and Ohio, and visited preserves in several other states. Most have been more than adequate for our needs, but overall we have not found them to be the idyllic resorts that the fancy brochures the marketing people put out depict.

This is our third visit to the Colorado River preserve in Columbus, Texas, and the first time that we have not had problems with electrical power (so far). As in past trips, the electrical posts at several RV sites are covered with plastic bags and inoperable, so even though the campground is supposed to have 94 campsites available, a number of them are out of service. Nobody ever seems to get around to repairing them.

This lack of maintenance seems to be a common theme at many Thousand Trails/NACO preserves across the country. We have been to some preserves where interior roads were in poor shape, and others where swimming pools and hot tubs were out of commission. There have been a couple that we have not even visited, because of the poor reports on them posted at the Thousand Trails Yahoo group.

Despite maintenance problems at some locations, every preserve we have visited or stayed in has been very clean, and the staff have always been very friendly and helpful.

Be aware that this system was designed for family camping, so in the summertime you can expect lots of kids, bicycles, smoky campfires, and such. If this isn’t your thing, like us, you will probably want to avoid the preserves when school is out of session.

Many Thousand Trails members have expressed concern over the growing numbers of RV sites that are leased out on a seasonal basis, taking them out of the pool for traveling members. These are usually the most desirable sites in the preserves. Given that, we still have always been able to find a site at any Thousand Trails or NACO campground we have visited.

What really burns me up is the fact that they have hired an outside company to handle annual dues payments. This company is also a collection agency, and there has been a lack of communication between them and the Thousand Trails office a couple of times in terms of posting payments.  Twice the dweebs at the outside company have called us and acted like we were deadbeats, when in fact the payment was already made, but Thousand Trails had not updated the records they share with them.

If you are interested in a Thousand Trails membership, be sure to get a nationwide one, with the NACO package included. And be aware that no two Thousand Trails memberships seem to be the same. It’s all about how good a negotiator you are and how hungry the salesman is, as to pricing and what added benefits your membership may have.

You can come to a preserve and sit through their sales spiel, but be aware that like all campground membership sales reps, some of the folks hustling these memberships are very much into the hard sell. A new membership will cost you thousands of dollars. Or, like us, you can buy a used membership.

There are tons of folks out there who have Thousand Trails/NACO memberships who just want to get rid of them and stop paying the dues. You can find a used membership for anywhere from free to about $1,000. Some people ask a whole lot more for them, because they believed the salesman who sold it and told them they could always get their money back.

When we decided we wanted a membership, I simply put a post on the Escapees forum and was swamped with folks wanting to unload theirs for anywhere from free to $5,000.

We got our membership used for $100 plus the $750 transfer fee, from a lady whose husband died and she wasn’t RVing any more. We can stay at any Thousand Trails or NACO park nationwide for fourteen days, and go directly to another one with no days out of the system. The original owner wanted to give it to us, but my attorney said to give her $100 to make it a binding contract.

Our annual dues are $500, which gives us 50 nights of camping, and after that, we pay $5 a night. If we wanted to pay higher annual dues, we could stay in Thousand Tails/NACO parks 365 days a year. So it can be a good bargain if we used it enough, which we hope to do, now that our schedule is not so complicated.

If you are considering a used membership, always call Thousand Trails and give them the contract number and ask what it includes, and if there will be any changes if you buy it. Here is a link to a website where you may be able to find a good deal, if you are looking for a used membership  http://www.rvparkstore.com/campground_memberships.htm

And while you’re online, check out Bad Nick’s new blog post What Does It Take? and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – A cloth is not woven from a single thread.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

The last month has been so chaotic that it seems like we were always on the go, pushing deadlines, or dealing with one problem after another. Yesterday, we had a much needed quiet day, and it did wonders to rejuvenate both of us!

We slept in, then just stayed warm and cozy snuggling under the covers, talking, and putting off starting our day as long as possible. The temperature had dropped down to 29 degrees overnight, and the day’s high was only in the mid-50s, with a gloomy gray sky. Except for a quick walk down to the dumpster, we never even stepped outside all day long.

The day passed peacefully, watching TV, browsing the internet, and I even laid down on the couch for a quick nap late in the afternoon. In short, it was a lazy day! We all need those now and then.

I mentioned the many deer that live here at the Thousand Trails preserve in yesterday’s blog. They provided quite a bit of entertainment as we watched them cavorting around our campsite. Some of the yearlings chased each other around like so many children playing tag, and it was obvious that they were having a lot of fun. We had fun just enjoying the show!

After close to a month without television, I sure am enjoying having the new automatic Winegard rooftop dish. We watched several holiday movies on the Hallmark channel, and caught up on the news broadcasts, to see who we’re at war with this week.

I spent an hour or two catching up on paperwork, and logging in several new reservations for our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally. For some reason, people who use Firefox as their internet web browser are having problems registering online, but if they use Internet Explorer or another browser, everything works fine.

We have almost 80 registrations already, and we already have over 20 vendors registered who will be selling everything from tire pressure monitoring systems to jewelry, RV cleaning supplies, Fantastic vents, computer accessories, RV insurance, windshield repair, and more. I think this is going to be a big one, folks!

Miss Terry made us a delicious dinner, and we spent the evening doing what we had done all day long, which was not much of anything. Some people would call a day like this wasted, and back in my old workaholic days, I’d have felt guilty for not doing anything productive all day long. But it sure was nice not to have to do anything we didn’t want to do. I just may do the same thing again today!

Thought For The Day – Life is messy. Wear your apron!

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally